The sound of indifference

However you spell it, the meaning of the sound I heard on the other end of the phone line was unmistakable; it was the sound of rejection, indifference, the sound Iowa Republicans are making these days when asked about Rick Perry. Or so says Steve Deace.

I had called Deace, probably the most popular — and influential — rightwing radio host in Iowa, to ask him about the man who initially soared in the polls in the Hawkeye State and then plummeted faster than a buck-shot dove over an Iowa cornfield. “Rick Perry did not live up to people’s expectations,” he said, noting that the Texas governor was running at 7 percent in the latest polls.

Deace, whose broadcasts blanket Iowa and whose slogan is “Fear God. Tell the Truth. Make Money,” wrote on his blog recently that only two of the GOP candidates will have to depart the race if they don’t win the January 3 Iowa caucuses. Those two, he wrote, are Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann, “the two candidates Christian pro-family/pro-life voters trust the most.”

Perry, he said, never recovered from the mistake of calling people “heartless” if they didn’t agree with his position on in-state college tuition for children of undocumented immigrants. “I don’t want to say it was unpardonable but it comes pretty close,” he said. “When employment’s at 9 percent, it’s very difficult to recover from the blunder of telling employers that if you don’t want to pay for their tuition, you’re heartless.”

Blogging on Deace’s website about the November 19 Family Values Forum in Des Moines, Jen Green, Deace’s broadcast partner, critiqued Perry a bit more kindly but hardly less damning: “Rick Perry proved himself to be immensely likable and humble. I now see why he got elected — it’s hard not to like him when you experience him on a more personal level than just a stump speech or a debate. Once I doubted it, but now, I do believe he is well-intentioned. But although they start with the same letter, ‘likable’ and ‘leader’ are worlds apart. I do not see him as a strong leader and nothing from Saturday’s event made me change my mind about that.”

In 2008, Deace and his fellow Christian conservatives backed Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor who went on to win the Iowa caucuses. This year, the choice isn’t as clear-cut, as Deace explains in the conclusion to his post:

“If you’re one of the Christian pro-family/pro-life voters who doesn’t want Romney and doesn’t yet trust Gingrich, then you’re looking strongly at Bachmann and Santorum as your champion. Especially since Rick Perry is a virtual non-entity in the state, despite being the only one currently running network TV ads. Perry just hasn’t been able to overcome a slew of disastrous debate performances and gaffes.”

Deace told me he believes Gingrich will win the Iowa caucuses, although he prefers Santorum or Bachmann, whichever one steps forward and coalesces the conservative Christian vote.